


Out of the Wastes

by Sholio



Series: Shadows of the Apt fusion [1]
Category: White Collar
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Survival, Wilderness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-04-29 11:25:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5125691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A soldier and an enslaved enemy combatant are the sole survivors of an attack, stranded in the wilderness and forced to cooperate or die. Fusion with the fantasy series "Shadows of the Apt". (No canon knowledge required, and contains no spoilers for the books; see explanation of pertinent canon information in the beginning notes.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out of the Wastes

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is a fusion with the Shadows of the Apt series by Adrian Tchaikovsky. (If you'd like to read them -- and they are excellent! -- the first book is [Empire in Black and Gold](http://www.amazon.com/Empire-Black-Gold-Shadows-Apt/dp/1616141921/).) For purposes of reading this fic, here is what you need to know:
> 
> The books take place in a world populated by many different groups of humans who each have their own insectile attributes, semi-magical inborn abilities called Arts. For example, the Wasps can fly and have a "sting" (they throw fireballs, basically). Mantises are genius swordfighters with preternatural speed; Dragonflies are expert fliers; Spiders can climb walls and manipulate the minds of others. In the books' timeframe, the Wasp Empire is trying to conquer the world, and the general level of technology is Industrial Revolution-era.
> 
> The only other thing you need to know is that one of the Arts some groups have is an aptitude for machines. Those who have it are called the Apt, and can build and use things like guns and tanks. The Inapt literally cannot; you can put a gun in their hands and show them how to use it, and they will be completely incapable of doing so -- they simply cannot understand. Dragonflies are Inapt (which means Neal, in this 'verse, cannot pick locks -- he's incapable of comprehending them). Wasps are one of the Apt groups (along with Beetles, Flies, and a few others).
> 
> Many thanks to [frith_in_thorns](http://archiveofourown.org/users/frith_in_thorns/) for turning me onto this series in the first place, and providing excellent sounding board/cheerleading/beta services while I was writing this fic!

Niall woke facedown with his mouth full of sand. 

He stirred slowly, and became aware that he was desperately thirsty, and his head hurt horribly. When he sat up, sand flaked off him. With the heavy, clanking chain trailing from his wrist, he raised a tentative hand to touch his head, which felt about three times its normal size. Gingerly he ran his fingers around the edges of sand-crusted dried blood, unable to bring himself to touch the actual wound.

It had felt like the raider's axe had split his head open. They must have thought so too; it was the only reason, he realized, looking down the line of dead slaves with sand blowing over their bodies, that he hadn't died along with everyone else.

In one further stroke of fortune, he seemed to have fallen in the shade. His line of chained slaves lay almost under the treads of the hulking automotive, which now listed at an angle like a wrecked ship, casting a long black shadow across the sand. The sun had moved on, and it winked in his eyes, now, as it hovered sunset-red on the edge of the world. But the automotive would have shielded him from most of its killing force while it was still high.

He'd been unconscious for most of the day.

He nearly jumped out of his skin when something clanked on the automotive, until he realized it was only a dangling flap of loose metal near the top of the broken machine, banging gently in the wind as the evening breeze rose. But he'd been too muddle-headed from pain and thirst to think, until now, that all of the raiders might not be gone. The resulting spike of adrenaline brutalized his throbbing head, making it even harder to think. 

No. There was no reason for them to stick around. It had been hours. The raiding party -- mostly Scorpions, from what he'd seen, with a scattering of other kinden -- had hit fast and hard. They'd killed everyone, the slaves and their Scorpion minders and the Wasp detachment guarding the caravan. From what he could see of the automotive, and the picked-over bodies of the dead Wasp-kinden soldiers nearby, they'd taken everything useful that wasn't nailed down, and fled into the desert again.

Apparently, they hadn't bothered to pick over the slaves. Good to be underestimated. And it was probably the only reason he was still alive.

Alive ... for now. Squinting against the near-blinding pain in his skull, he looked down the row of dead slaves, the chains still linking his wrists to theirs. As far as he could see, from here to the horizon, was nothing but sand.

He was in a lot of trouble.

But he was no longer a prisoner ... or, at least, he wouldn't be in a minute. Niall tried to concentrate past the stabbing pain and dizziness. A few months ago, he would have said this pain in his head was the worst pain he'd ever experienced. By now, he'd learned whole new lessons in pain. Still, it made it very difficult to attain the mental stillness to focus on his Art.

Niall had a particular Art that was unique among the people he'd met or heard about. Of course, he didn't go around advertising it, and he expected that other people who had it probably kept it secret for similar reasons.

He focused on his swollen, abraded wrists. As he felt himself fall into the right headspace, his hands, which a moment ago had been too large to fit through the cuffs, slithered out with ease.

Back at home in the Dragonfly Commonweal, he'd been an accomplished thief. Using his unique talent, he could slither through into spaces too small for even a Fly. He'd thought a great deal of himself, then.

Then.

Before the war came to the town he called home. Before he was forced into a role he'd never wanted, picking up a sword in hands that had been used only to nick shiny jewels and tease pretty Dragonfly-ladies. Before he'd discovered a core of inner ... he didn't even know what to call it; words like "courage" and "heroism" felt like poison on his tongue, after all he'd seen and done, but he had found that, for once, he couldn't slither out of his responsibilities -- couldn't fly away and let the Wasps overrun _his_ part of the Commonweal without joining the fight.

And then he'd been captured, and enslaved, and he'd discovered that being able to escape from any prison was only useful if you had somewhere to escape _to._

Not that he hadn't tried. After the last time he was returned to his chains, brutally beaten, he'd realized that if he was going to live long enough to escape, he was going to stop trying every time a guard's back was turned. Instead, he'd need to wait, and be patient, and hope he was clever enough, and still strong enough, to recognize his opportunity when it came.

This looked like an opportunity if ever he'd seen one.

He staggered to his feet. Dizziness washed over him. Using his Art to slip the cuffs had taken the last bit of strength he had. He knew he couldn't fly, and thirst was a torment to rival the agony in his head.

But ... he was free. And all the guards were dead. True, he didn't know where he was, or which way to go to find shelter and water. But the sun was setting, which meant he had all night to make plans before morning would bring blinding brilliance and fresh torment.

Perhaps the raiders had accidentally overlooked some water. The caravan had been reasonably well stocked, to supply the slaves and their overlords for their trek across the desert. Even if all that remained was some Scorpion guard's private canteen stashed in his tunic, it would be better than nothing.

Barefoot and reeling, he stumbled to the nearest of the Wasp bodies. Like the raiders, he assumed the slaves would have nothing useful to offer. Part of him wanted to check and see if any others, like him, had managed to escape their attackers' blades; it would be very nice not to be alone. And he'd gotten to know several of his fellow slaves during their days of confinement in the automotive's hold. His mind shied away from the painful thought that all of them were dead. He was tired, so tired, of grief and loss.

But he needed to see to his own needs first. Time was slipping away. The sun had already dropped below the rim of the world, bringing a sharp chill to the air, and shadow crept like a bruise across the sky. Night was his ally, but it was also his enemy, for it would make the task of searching for supplies that much slower and harder.

His spirits rose a little when he found that the raiders had been careless and haphazard in their haste. The first body he checked was completely stripped, right down to its boots. But several more had been left alone but for their stolen weapons, and he even found a small sword on one of the dead Scorpions. It wasn't much, but it made him feel better with a weapon in his hand. And he could take clothing from the dead soldiers to replace his slave tunic, even if the idea of wearing Wasp colors was repugnant.

Somewhat heartened, he hopped up into the gaping hole in the side of the automotive. The raiders must have included at least one Apt member, for they'd used some kind of explosive in their attack. Inside was a jumbled mess of shadows. The fading light of twilight streamed through the many rents and cracks in the hull. Niall picked his way through the debris, trying not to cut his feet, and wished his head would stop hurting so much.

It was only paranoia that saved him. He was on high alert, jumping at shadows, and when the attack actually came, his reflexes were already so hyper-sensitive that he flung himself to the side even as white-hot light seared his eyes and spent itself uselessly on the automotive's iron hull.

Shock gave him a burst of hitherto unknown energy, and he managed to tap his Art enough for a quick flurry of wings, carrying him up into the darkness. He lost it almost immediately, but now he was perched on the jutting edge of what had once been a catwalk overlooking the slave hold. For a moment, all he could see was the dull fading red glow on the inside of the hull where the bolt of Wasp fire -- and it _had_ been Wasp fire; he was sure of it -- had heated the metal.

Then he began to pick out details from the dimness around him, and as things slowly came into definition, he realized that he had done the worst possible thing. He'd been fired at from above, and now he was looking into the eyes of his enemy from not more than ten paces away.

The Wasp-kinden soldier stared back at him with dull, exhausted eyes. His hand was up, fingers spread, but even as Niall scrambled backward as far as the catwalk would let him, he realized that the odds were good that the Wasp had expended all his energy on that one attack. His enemy looked as worn down as Niall himself, and at least as badly hurt; dried blood crusted his uniform, nearly obscuring the officer's insignia on his coat. 

He was trapped, too, in a tangle of twisted metal that might once have been part of the automotive's control area. Niall's eyes skated from one part of the mess to another. He could see the scorched and melted places where the Wasp, in desperation, had tried to use his Art to free himself. It didn't seem to be a ruse. The Wasp was genuinely trapped, which meant he wouldn't be able to follow as Niall escaped.

Niall prepared to leap over the edge to the floor below.

"Wait!" the Wasp-kinden gasped, speaking for the first time. His voice was ragged, little more than a cracked whisper. His situation must have been even more dire than Niall's; the defunct automotive would have been an oven in the heat of the day.

Not that Niall felt sorry for him. But pity ... pity, he could still manage.

"What?" Niall said. It was the first time he'd spoken since he woke up, and he felt his dry lips split open, spilling blood. "You want my help, don't you? When you just attacked me. You want me to help free you, so you can fry me in the back."

The Wasp ran his tongue over cracked lips, and lowered his hand, clenching his fist. It took Niall a moment to realize that this was a peace-gesture for Wasps, a way of making themselves no longer a threat. "Truce," he said.

Niall kept the small sword up, point aimed at his enemy, even though he was too far away to actually do anything with it. Having the Wasp at swordspoint helped him keep at bay the reminder that, up until today, this man had held Niall's life in his hands, and hadn't cared -- would, in fact, have had him put to death as soon as look at him. "You're only saying that because you can't get free without me."

"That's true," the Wasp admitted in his dry scratch of a voice. "But I could help you, too. We could help each other. You've been outside. Is anyone else still alive?"

Niall tried to decide if there was any way the truth could hurt him, in this instance, and decided at last that it would hurt his enemy more. "No. They're all dead."

The Wasp closed his eyes briefly, then opened them again. Though dull with thirst and pain, his gaze had sharpened. "Then I'm the only chance you have of getting out of this alive. You can't fix the automotive without my help."

Niall gave the devastation a brief, incredulous glance. " _Can_ it be fixed?"

"I don't know. But you certainly can't, can you? Your people haven't the Art for it."

Niall didn't see any need to respond to that. "I can put my sword down, but you're armed all the time. How do I know you won't drill a hole in me when my back is turned?"

"You don't," the Wasp said. "And I don't know you won't cut my throat as soon as I take my eyes off you. So, a truce. Until we get out of this wasteland. Or, if that's too much, for tonight at least."

They stared at each other for a moment longer. Niall's sword arm ached. He was so tired. And he felt as if he were balanced on the knife edge of a decision that could cut him no matter what he did -- as if the choice he made here could influence the entire course of his life, determine what kind of person he was going to be from here on out. Once, when he was younger and much more innocent, he would never have hesitated to help someone who was trapped and injured and possibly dying. But that was before he'd lost his entire world at the hands of this man's people.

Finally he said, "I have to find water while it's still light. Without that, neither one of us is going to live much longer anyway. But, when I'm done searching, I'll come back. If you're still alive, I'll help you get free, but only so you can try to fix the automotive."

And then he leaped over the edge into the dark bowels of the automotive before the Wasp had a chance to say anything else.

 

***

 

He did find water, eventually, and quite a lot of it. The raiders had overlooked two large cans in a recessed space in the cargo hold, half-hidden by more debris. It was warm and stale, but no water had ever tasted better. Niall dipped handfuls and splashed it onto his face. It stung the cracks in his lips, but the cool touch on his forehead eased the ache in his head somewhat.

The moon had risen by this time, its cold white light shining through the gaps in the hull. By that light and the advantage of his kinden's sharp eyesight, Niall hunted through the junk for something to carry water in. He had to keep sitting down as he searched. His headache and dizziness hadn't faded; if anything, it had gotten worse. The water rolled uneasily in his otherwise empty stomach. He felt wretched and miserable.

And he had to ask himself why he was bothering to push himself past his limits just to take water to a dying enemy who'd probably backstab him as soon as a chance was offered. He should lie down and rest. Now that he had water, the rest of it was less urgent. He could sleep, and search the automotive more thoroughly in daylight. Even if he couldn't find food, he could afford to take a day or two to rest up and see if he couldn't find some sort of map. He was used to being hungry. He could rest, recover enough strength to fly, and try to find some sort of oasis ...

Even as these thoughts ran through his aching head, he located a small metal bowl that had rolled under one of the bolted-down benches. He filled it from the water can and went back to the slave hold.

He was so tired by now that he stood for awhile looking up in the dark, trying and failing to summon his wings. If he couldn't fly, then it was out of his hands, wasn't it? He couldn't find another way up in the darkness. And he thought, again, how stupid he was being, to squander his last reserves of strength bringing succor to a wounded enemy.

But then he managed to find it, the fragile thread of his Art, and fluttered to the catwalk before dropping heavily, gracelessly, onto it. Even a Beetle would not have been so clumsy. Still, he held onto the bowl of water.

"Wasp?" he asked the darkness.

He wasn't sure if he was disappointed or relieved when there was a small rustling from the shadows ahead of him. At least he wasn't here alone, surrounded by the dead. It might be a thin comfort to have only a Wasp slaver for companionship, but here, in the cold heart of the night, it seemed better than nothing.

"You came back," the Wasp rasped.

"Yes, well, you made a good point. I can't fix this cursed machine, and I'm not sure if there is an oasis within flying distance."

"There's not," the Wasp said. He moved then, a dim shape shifting in the darkness, and Niall poised to flee until he realized the Wasp was only straightening himself, pushing upright as far as he could get with his lower body pinned by twisted metal. It was a pride thing, Niall thought; the Wasp didn't want to face a former slave slumped in his prison.

But he kept his hand flat on the crushed metal in front of him. His other arm, Niall saw as he cautiously approached, seemed to be twisted at his side. He'd attacked one-handed because he had only one working hand.

"I brought water," Niall said. He rested his hand on the hilt of the sword; he'd found a dead man's belt to secure it to his waist, since his slave tunic had none. But he didn't draw it, maintaining the letter if not the spirit of their tentative truce. He held out the bowl.

The Wasp took it from him, keeping his hand turned palm-downward to minimize the threat on his end as well. They both took care not to touch each other. The Wasp took a few greedy gulps, the bowl rattling against his teeth -- his hand was shaking -- and then set it down with a visible effort of will, forcing himself not to drink too fast.

"Are you still willing to help me get out?" he asked.

Niall tried to think of alternatives. He could have the Wasp talk him through repairs -- no, it wouldn't work. He knew without even trying that he wouldn't be able to do something like that; machines were a foreign language to him, one in which the words twisted and slid out of his grasp. And from the Wasp's casual statement about the oasis, he'd also realized that his former captor had a much better grasp on the geography of the region than he did. The Wasp had probably looked at local maps on their trek through the desert. Niall had seen nothing but the stinking, jolting inside of the slave hold.

"I guess I don't have a choice, do I?"

To his surprise, the Wasp smiled slightly. "I guess neither of us do." 

 

***

 

It took Niall most of the rest of the night to free the trapped Wasp. It was exhausting work, especially when they were both already near the end of their strength. Straining together, they finally managed to shift the buckled beam that was holding his legs in place. The Wasp made a sharp sound, somewhere between a gasp and a cry, and slumped with a suddenness that made Niall think, for a moment, that he'd died. He had heard of that kind of thing happening to people trapped in building collapses or avalanches -- freeing a trapped limb could sometimes cause a sort of shock that even the Commonweal's doctors didn't understand, causing an otherwise healthy person to collapse and die in minutes.

But then the Wasp rolled onto his back and managed, with a great effort, to sit up, leaning against the damaged wall. Niall sank down across from him, knees buckling. They were almost close enough to touch each other, but still maintained their separation as much as they could. Niall thought he should probably be afraid, but he was too weary and sick. He could hear the Wasp's heavy, rasping breathing in the dark.

"Petric," the Wasp said suddenly.

"What?" Niall asked, stirring out of the stupor he'd started to sink into.

"Petric. It's my name. Captain Petric."

"I don't need to know your name," Niall mumbled, and fell asleep where he sat.

 

***

 

When he woke, sunlight was streaming through the gaps in the automotive's hull. Morning, curse it. He'd lost the night, and now the day was back, with its brutal, baking heat.

But he felt a little less miserable, though still shaky, weak, and unwell. From what he vaguely remembered, he'd fallen asleep sitting up, but now he was lying down, stretched out not as if he'd fallen, but as if someone had laid him down and straightened him out while he slept.

Petric was sleeping a few feet away.

Niall sat up slowly. For the first time, he got a clear look at his enemy by daylight. He remembered seeing Petric around, now, among the small garrison of Wasp troops who were guarding the caravan. He couldn't remember whether Petric had been in charge, though his rank implied that he probably had been, or at least one of the people in charge.

_So now I know who to blame._

All he would have to do was draw his blade. Petric seemed to be deeply asleep, dead to the world. Niall was still weak, but he could crawl the short distance between them and slit that exposed, sleeping throat before Petric could stir --

And he shied away from the thought with revulsion. Probably he should. But he had never been _that_ kind of sneak. Back in the Commonweal, he'd once prided himself on never having hurt anyone in any of his nighttime escapades. He knew basic sword-handling, but had never drawn blood.

Not until the war. He'd drawn plenty of blood now. Enough to bathe in. And he couldn't say that he might not slit the throat of a sleeping enemy, if he had to, if it was the only way he could survive.

But he ran his eyes over Petric's sleeping form. The Wasp-kinden was hurt badly enough that Niall wasn't entirely sure he'd even be able to stand up, let alone give chase. His arm, from the angle, appeared to be broken; blood caked the torn legs of his uniform trousers.

And Niall had promised truce. He might kill a sleeping enemy if he had to, but he couldn't bring himself to do it under a truce flag.

And, he realized belatedly, he still had his sword. His hand was resting on it now. He'd fallen asleep in front of Petric, which in retrospect was monumentally stupid; his enemy had been given every opportunity to strip him of weapons, tie him up, even kill him. And Petric had done none of those things.

_Maybe he's not thinking any clearer than I am._

Or maybe he, too, was respecting the borders of the truce-country in which they'd come to dwell. An honorable Wasp? Well, he'd seen stranger things since he left the Commonweal.

Thirst and the need to pee drove him up, away from contemplation of his sleeping enemy. By daylight he could see what he hadn't seen in the dark: there was a ladder that hung partway into the slave hold, though it stopped far short of the bottom. It seemed to have been knocked slightly askew by the damage to the automotive, so now it canted to the side. Broken off in the attack, maybe? Niall touched it, and when he did, it made a screeching noise of protest and then a second part of the ladder telescoped out somehow, and thunked into the floor of the slave hold.

Huh. Maybe machines weren't that hard to use after all.

He climbed down, and went out to relieve himself in the sand. The sun was still low enough that the heat had not grown unpleasant yet. The morning was almost comfortable.

Experimentally, he reached for his Art and summoned his wings. They came reluctantly, and he did a short hop, more of a long jump than a flight, before dropping back into the sand with a shock that jarred his injured skull and ratcheted his headache up a few notches. He _could_ fly, but not high and not for long. Walking was, apparently, the only option he had for the near future.

Or riding, if Petric could get this monstrosity fixed.

Niall went back inside and drank his fill from the water can. Then, driven by a reluctant sort of responsibility, he took a look around for something else to carry water in -- he wasn't sure if Petric could walk yet, and it would save him a trip back to the shattered command deck to retrieve the bowl. There were, it turned out, a few things to choose from. Now that he could see it by daylight, this seemed to have been some kind of mess area, judging by the random plates and utensils scattered about. Sadly it had been thoroughly stripped of food; he couldn't find so much as a crumb without a far more thorough search than he was prepared to engage in at the moment. He did locate another bowl, filled it with water, and carried it back upstairs.

... where he was startled to find Petric no longer sleeping where Niall had left him. After an instant's panic, imagining the Wasp soldier sneaking up on him, Niall spotted him at the edge of one of the gaps in the hull, sitting on an overturned metal cabinet. And watching him. 

When Petric saw he'd been spotted, he smiled. It was a friendly smile. Well, Niall thought darkly, he could afford to be friendly. Between the two of them, he was the only one who currently had the ability to strike at a distance. If he took it into his head, he could render Niall down to a scorched spot on the decking before Niall would have time to draw his sword, let alone close the distance between them.

"Hungry?" Petric asked.

"You have food?" Niall asked, taken aback.

Petric held up a flat cake of something. "They took my weapons, but they didn't search me well. I don't think they could get close enough."

He gripped the cake of whatever it was in his teeth and snapped it in half. During Niall's absence, he'd managed to straighten his broken arm and had bound it with pieces of his uniform coat. The rest of the coat's rags were draped over the cabinet next to him, leaving him in a loose tunic. He'd tucked the hand of his injured arm into his belt.

He must have got up as soon as Niall left. _Was he ever asleep at all?_ Niall wondered. Maybe the Wasp had just been biding his time, feigning sleep to see if Niall planned to attack or not.

_Well, you know better than to trust a Wasp, anyway._

Petric was still holding out the wafer. Niall came just close enough to swap it for the bowl of water; then he sat crosslegged at the edge of the gap in the hull, out of the sunlight, to eat. It was some kind of compressed travel bread, tasteless and unpleasant, but it was better than the sort of things he'd been eating as a slave.

"So what do you think?" Niall asked.

Petric looked up. From the expression on his face, he was genuinely caught off guard. "About what?"

"This." Niall waved a hand at the iron hulk around them. "The machine. Can you fix it?"

"What? No." Petric smiled faintly. "This thing isn't going anywhere again. Not with the tools and resources we have. I can't possibly fix it. I'm surprised you didn't know that."

Niall had known nothing of the sort. For all he knew, the Apt could wave their hands, screw some bolts together, and perform a technological miracle. He scrambled to his feet, drawing his sword. Petric's hand twitched up, half-raised, fingers curling.

"You lied to me," Niall snarled. "I freed you in the understanding you'd fix this machine. You said you'd fix it!"

"No, I said you couldn't fix it without me," Petric countered calmly. His hand hovered where it was, poised between safety and threat. "Which is true. As for fixing it, I admit I was willing to try, though it's not my area of skill, but one look in daylight let me know it's impossible. Given a month, a fully equipped workshop, and an expert artificer -- which I'm not -- then, certainly. For the two of us, alone in a wasteland? I don't think so."

"Then give me one good reason why I'm not better off on my own," Niall said between his teeth.

"Other than the fact I could kill you where you stand, before you have a chance to stab me?" Petric asked, still calm and now, almost, wryly amused. "If you leave here on your own, which way did you plan to go? How well do you know the Lowlands?"

"I'll pick a direction," Niall said grimly.

"Yes, well, I may not be an expert on desert navigation, but I at least know that the town we came from is two days' travel that way --" He pointed over his shoulder. "And the one we were going to is two more days' travel _that_ way. There are also a couple of oases somewhere north of here, possibly closer. I think one of them would be quicker to reach, if we can find it, but the garrison town is more of a sure thing." Now that was definitely amusement on his face, tinged with a certain amount of sardonic bitterness. "Of course, it's full of my people. You couldn't simply walk in."

"I'm not going to a Wasp town. I'd die first."

"I thought you might say that. In which case, the oasis is your best choice, I suppose." The sardonic edge of his smile was now clearly directed at himself. "For my part, I'd take the town. It's farther, but I know as long as I orient myself correctly and navigate in a straight line, I can find it. However --" He kept looking at Niall, his gaze cool and level. "I'm fairly sure I can't make it on my own."

Meaning, he was hurt worst than he want to let on. "So I help you, and you show me where the oasis is," Niall said.

"And in the meantime, truce."

"Truce," Niall agreed.

 

***

 

Petric suggested they set out at nightfall. He claimed he could navigate by the stars. Niall decided to let him. He knew basic star-navigation himself; most flyers did. However, being able to steer your course by the stars was no help if you didn't know what your heading was.

He left Petric either brooding or resting, or both, and went to explore the rest of the automotive. Petric directed him to the sections of the machine that might be more likely than others to contain useful supplies. The fact that Petric wasn't doing this himself also, to Niall's mind, attested that he was hurt too badly to walk with any ease. Either that or he was lazy, but that wasn't Niall's read on the man, at all.

 _So how does he think he's going to hike across the desert tonight?_ Maybe he was saving up his strength for flying. In any case, Niall told himself, it wasn't his concern if the Wasp dropped dead, as long as he pointed Niall at the oasis first.

Despite their haste, the raiders had been thorough, but Niall was able to locate a few useful things here and there. He found a proper canteen, which would be a big help, although they were still going to have to leave a lot of the water behind him. He also found a small knife on one of the Wasp corpses -- an eating knife, not a fighting knife, but the more weapons, the better -- and a handful of other useful-looking items: a rope, some dried-out hunks of bread from the slaves' feeding stores, a sack to put it all in.

While he was at it, he exchanged his slave's rags for decent clothing and boots taken from the tallest dead Wasp he could find. Stealing from the dead felt ugly, and trying to assuage his conscience by reminding himself they were _Wasp_ dead didn't help; it only reminded him he was standing there in the black and gold of the enemy. Not that anyone could possibly take him for a Wasp, with his golden Dragonfly skin and recognizably foreign features.

He climbed back up to see if Petric had inconveniently keeled over dead in his absence. Instead, Petric was busy fashioning a crutch from a length of iron bar with a screwed-on crosspiece, padded with the remainder of his coat. He took a few test steps, supporting himself with his good arm and wincing as he did so.

"How in the world do you think you're going to do this?" Niall asked. He got the satisfaction of seeing Petric jump; he hadn't lost his thief's stealth. "You can barely walk on flat decking; how are you going to walk in sand?"

"I'll manage." Petric's dry look took in Niall's new attire, and Niall caught himself feeling suddenly very self-conscious of the fact that he was wearing clothes he'd stolen off the corpses of Petric's dead colleagues -- possibly dead friends. All Petric said, though, was, "While you're at it, see if you can find a coat in my size without too many holes in it."

Maybe he'd given the Wasps too much credit for feeling compassionate human emotions. "Doesn't bother you, then?" Niall asked. He wasn't sure why he felt so compelled to dig in the knife. Maybe only to make himself feel better about not feeling worse. "Want me to pick you out anything else while I'm at it? A nice new set of --"

"Of course it bothers me," Petric snapped. It was the first time Niall had seen him ruffled; his eyes snapped with anger. "But the dead can't use those things. The living can. And we'll both need something warm once the sun goes down."

 

***

 

Nightfall brought welcome relief from the day's heat. They sat side by side, with a wary separation between them, in the doorway of the slave hold, and ate some of the bread Niall had found. They'd both drunk their fill from the water cans, and taken the opportunity to wash off some of the dirt and blood. From here, they would have only the water they carried with them.

Niall had wondered how Petric planned to get down to the ground floor, but he needn't have: the Wasp dropped his crutch over the edge, then jumped after it, the blur of his wings settling him lightly on the floor of the slave hold. Resting most of the day seemed to have restored some of his energy, or maybe he'd been exaggerating his weakness somewhat to throw his enemy off guard; it was hard to tell.

Niall couldn't say he'd be sorry to be away from this place. He still felt like he was suffocating every time he walked into the slave hold, even though the doors were flung open to the desert and the walls rent with the violence of the raiders' attack. On top of that, bodies spoiled quickly in the desert heat, and the sweetish stink of decay tainted the clean evening breeze.

"We should bury them," Niall said.

"All of them?" Petric inquired. "We'll be at it for days."

The Wasp-kinden's light, dry tone raised Niall's hackles. "Just the slaves, then. _They_ at least didn't choose to be here."

"Not all of us chose to be here," Petric said softly.

"That may be, but only some of us were dragged here in chains."

Petric didn't answer.

The first stars were beginning to emerge from the purpling evening sky. Niall stood up; his head offered a stab of protest at this. "Ready to move?"

"No," Petric sighed. "But soonest begun, soonest done." He pointed across the sand. "That way."

They had split the supplies between them. Niall was carrying the food and canteen, and Petric had a second water container he'd jury-rigged from an empty, flattish reservoir he'd taken off the automotive's systems somewhere. It was bulkier and more awkward than the canteen, but smaller and lighter than the water cans. Even the one they'd mostly emptied was too large to easily carry.

"We'll probably wish we had that water later," Petric murmured, looking over his shoulder as the bulk of the automotive looming against the darkening night sky.

"If you want to carry it, be my guest."

It turned out that Petric's plan for walking on a crutch in the loose, dragging sand was to make short hops with his wings. Mostly he leapfrogged from the top of one dune to the next, and then waited for Niall to catch up. Niall tried it himself a couple of times -- it seemed infinitely preferable to slogging on foot up the crumbling side of a dune -- but found that, in his depleted state, exerting his Art was even more exhausting than walking on foot. Petric soon began to look drained and gray, slumping down in the sand while he waited for Niall.

On one of those rendezvouses, Niall sank down in the sand beside him, unable to go any farther without a break. They rested without speaking, mute in exhaustion, while the stars revolved slowly and grandly above them. Niall realized he hadn't been keeping track of their orientation with regards to the fixed star. He hoped Petric actually did know what he was doing when it came to star navigation.

"How bad are your legs, anyway?" Niall asked when he was able to stir himself.

"They'll heal," Petric said. Moving slowly and stiffly, he unslung the water container from his back, and poured some out into his hand to drink.

"That's not what I asked."

The Wasp-kinden sighed. "I think it's nothing worse than severe bruising and a twisted knee. I hope. I've also got some broken ribs, maybe other internal injuries -- look, it doesn't help to make a list. I'll get where we're going, or I won't."

"Yeah, well, you've made sure that if you die out here, I die too, unless you're planning on telling me where the oasis is." Petric's stony silence was its own reply. "Yeah, that's what I thought. So apparently, we both get there or neither of us do, which means you tell me if you need to stop for a break _before_ you pass out."

A long silence. Then Petric said, "Fair enough," and passed the canteen to Niall.

 

***

 

On their next break, Petric said, "There might be something about the state of my legs I didn't mention."

Reluctantly, he pulled up the leg of his blood-stiff trousers, which had been cut apart and then knotted back together. The bandage that Niall had taken for a binding on his knee was actually knotted around the lower part of his thigh, and it, too, was stiff with blood.

"Got stabbed in the leg," Petric said. "The knee is banged up too, but that's what's making it hard to walk on, mostly."

"And you were going to mention this, when?"

"I'm mentioning it now," he said, not rising to the bait. "Because you're right. If I'm going to tie your future to mine, as I've done, then I won't withhold things you need to know."

Niall dug his fingertips into his throbbing forehead, below the crusted-over wound. "That's going to get infected."

"Probably already is," Petric said. "I cleaned it as well as I could back at the automotive, but medicines were one thing the bandits took for certain -- what little we carried."

Niall hissed in a breath through his teeth. "You wanted to go to the garrison town because they'd have physicians there. As opposed to an oasis, which might have a village of beetle drovers if we're lucky."

Petric lifted a shoulder in a painful shrug. "We're committed now. I'm not sure if I could get us back on the main road without retracing our steps. Much faster to go forward."

"Why didn't you _tell_ me?"

"I didn't think it mattered," Petric said, in his usual mild way, but he seemed a little surprised this time. "What difference would it make? You'd still be in as much danger if you went there, whether you came in dragging a feverish Wasp-kinden officer or marched in as the prisoner of a healthy one."

 _The difference it could make is your life._ But Petric had a point. Why would he think Niall would care to risk his own skin for the sake of a Wasp soldier? For that matter, Niall wasn't entirely sure why it bothered him so much, except in the coldly calculating running-of-odds that it implied Petric was capable of.

But ... no ... there was more than that. Standing now, looking down at the Wasp-kinden retying the rags of his trousers around his injured leg, Niall realized that Petric could easily have forced him. He knew Petric still had his sting, and Niall was not egotistical enough to believe that he could beat Petric in a fight unless he got the drop on him. Even that badly hurt, Petric was (he believed) entirely capable of taking him prisoner and force-marching him to the Wasp city. True, it might doom them both, but this way, Niall had a pretty good chance at survival and escape, while Petric's odds of survival were much longer.

"Do you _want_ to die?" he burst out. "Is this some kind of Wasp-kinden ritual suicide thing? Atoning for your dishonor and all of that? Because I do _not_ consent to be dragged along for that."

Petric stared up at him, and then he laughed. It was hoarse and tired, but genuine. "We don't commit ritual suicide," he said.

It wasn't until they were walking again that Niall realized Petric hadn't answered the other part of his question.

 

***

 

There was no shelter, so as dawn broke they made one on the eastward side of a dune, scooping out a shallow berth in the sand and then, for a shade, propping up the salvaged coat that Petric had been using as a carry-sack for the canteen on his back.

"Shouldn't we want the west side?" Niall asked, squinting as the sun broke over the dunes.

Petric shook his head. "This way we get the morning sun, when it's not too harsh. The afternoon is the worst. We'll need all the shade we can manage, then."

The uncomfortable thought came to Niall, as they curled up in their coats and tried to sleep, that Petric was useful for a lot more than just pointing the way to the nearest oasis. If he _did_ have the temerity to die out here, Niall wasn't entirely sure he could survive on his own. He might be able to travel faster alone, but he wasn't even sure if _that_ was true; Petric had been keeping up a pretty good pace despite his injuries.

Despite his exhaustion, Niall slept fitfully, frequently waking. It was agonizingly hot, even with their fragile bit of shade, and thirst tormented him. He tried to ration himself to small sips from the canteen.

Petric slept in a kind of dead stupor, lips parted, breathing shallowly. Niall nerved himself at one point to touch his face, feeling for fever. Petric's skin was hot -- but, then, so was Niall's. The one thing he would say for being out on the dunes was that, by a small margin, it was less miserable than being crammed into the stinking hold of the slave ship. But that was an extremely low bar to clear.

The endless day finally passed, the sun creasing the dune and then sinking in soft shades of fire. Niall nudged Petric, and then had to shake him awake. Petric woke slowly, dazed and stupid at first. His eyes were glassy, and when Niall, after eating, offered him the other half of the remaining bread, he waved it off.

"You should clean your leg," Niall said.

"Not enough water."

"It won't matter how much water we have if we die in the dunes between here and the oasis, will it?"

Petric huffed a breath and undid the leg of his trousers. His leg was noticeably swollen and inflamed, even more so than earlier.

"It needs to be opened and drained," Petric said. His small smile was more of a grimace. "Not that I can convince you I have no ulterior motives for this, but I need to use your sword."

"I have something better, for this." Niall drew the small knife he'd found on the dead Wasp-kinden soldier. It needed to be sterilized. He hesitated, then started to pour water from the canteen over it. Petric's hand stopped him.

"Let me." Petric closed his fingers around the blade. There was a quick flash of light, limning his fingers for an instant so the bones could be seen through the skin. When he withdrew his hand, the blade was hot.

"Useful," Niall said, surprised. He had no idea Wasp-fire could be controlled so precisely. "Can you also boil water for tea?"

This got a brief smile. "Do you have tea?"

"Well ... no."

Petric huffed a soft laugh. He undid the filthy bandage and winced as he peeled it away from the wound. "Unless you have experience with battlefield surgery, I should do this."

"More than you'd think," Niall said. Another thing he wouldn't have been able to say just a year ago. He'd been so _young_ then ... and what he wouldn't give, to be that young again. "And my hand will be steadier, since you can -- feel it."

Whether or not it had been a ruse to get hold of the knife, Petric sat back, bracing himself against the dune and gripping his leg with his good hand to hold it still. "You sure this isn't just an excuse to enjoy getting a blade into a Wasp?" he inquired, and there was enough challenge in his slight smile to indicate it wasn't entirely a joke.

"You've got me," Niall said dryly. "That is exactly what this is all about."

All bravado aside, he wasn't looking forward to this. He wasn't bad at it, but he'd always hated treating people's wounds -- the feeling of their living flesh, the awareness that if he did something wrong, he could cause permanent damage or even kill someone. _At least this time, it's only a Wasp,_ he told himself; not a friend, not a battle-comrade, not a fellow slave. Somehow that didn't help as much as he was hoping.

The tip of the knife pierced Petric's swollen flesh. The Wasp-kinden made a stifled sound, low in his throat. Blood and dark matter oozed from the wound. This was going to be every bit as unpleasant as Niall had feared, and he was going to have to cut deeper. 

Casting about desperately for something to distract both of them, Niall asked, "So, any sweet Wasp-girls waiting for you back home?"

"What?" Petric said blankly.

"Girls. Or boys, as the case may be; I don't know how it works for you." When Petric still seemed blank, Niall pressed, "You know. Wives, court-loves ... harems ... life partners. Whatever it is that you lot have. Do you have any?"

"I -- there was. Once. Not now."

There was such desolation and loss in his voice that Niall wanted to swallow the words back. He'd only meant to make idle conversation, but instead it seemed he'd torn open a wound that had scabbed over rather than healed. He hadn't meant to hurt. At least it was a distraction, of sorts; he'd managed to cut deeper without Petric making any more of those terribly distressing injured sounds.

"And you?" Petric asked, seeming to drag himself consciously back from despair. "What about Dragonflies? Is there someone back there for you?"

"Uh ... sort of." He hadn't thought of Kayete in months -- had tried not to, in fact. After he was first taken, he'd dwelled endlessly on the last time he'd seen her, and the way they'd left things, tearing himself up with the idea that he might never have an opportunity to fix things. After a while he'd decided it was easier not to think about it. He'd tried to push all thoughts of his homeland aside, dwelling instead on the here-and-now. The present was terrible, but at least he wasn't tormenting himself with thoughts of a past he might never get back to. "Actually, I should probably say no."

"A miserable pair we are," Petric said.

"Speak for yourself." Niall pressed on the wound, forcing out more of the poisons, trying not to listen to the noise Petric made when he did it. "So, I have a really terrible idea, and you're probably going to hate me for suggesting it, but I think it might be the only thing we've got. Can you use your fire to cauterize the wound?"

"It's ... possible," Petric allowed. "In cases of last resort. If one was bleeding out, for example. It is, I understand, not pleasant. And burns are just as infection-prone as deep cuts."

"Yeah, but right now an infected cut is what you've got, and since we don't have anything to properly disinfect it, it's just going to get worse."

"True." Petric took a deep breath. "You know, I think this might be a good time for you to scout up to the top of this dune, before we lose the daylight completely. Get your wings on, see what there is to see."

What there was to see would be, in all likelihood, more dunes, but Niall didn't want to be around for this any more than Petric appeared to wanted him there. "Good idea." He hesitated, and then flipped the knife around, holding it out handle-first. "In case you need this."

He climbed the dune and launched himself into the air. His wings came no more easily despite the day's rest; he was worn down, dehydrated, badly underfed. Still, he managed to find a little inner lightness as he skimmed the air currents. Dragonflies were, of all things, born to fly. He flew high enough that he didn't have to hear any sounds Petric might be making, down there in the shelter all alone.

The desert was beautiful in the evening light. The dunes were molten gold, casting long blue shadows away from the setting sun. Their camp was tiny, just a dot in this great unpeopled wilderness. Niall fixed its location carefully to be sure he could find it again. He looked for their tracks, but the wind had erased them during the day.

Squinting toward the horizon in the direction they were traveling, Niall thought he could see something out there. A darker shadow. Mountains, perhaps? Or maybe only the oncoming shadow of the night.

He circled back down to land outside their shelter. Petric had his head resting against the dune, his face gray and tightly drawn with pain. He looked up when Niall landed, though. His wound had been rebandaged with a strip cut from the sleeve of his coat, which showed every sign of going the way of the other one. _Should've brought some extras along,_ Niall thought. Oh well, hindsight was what it was, and the extra weight would have been hard to carry anyway. 

Thinking about these things helped distract him from the faint, unpleasant smell of scorched flesh lingering in the shelter.

"See anything?" Petric asked.

"Dunes," Niall said. "Maybe mountains to the north. It's hard to say for sure."

"There is a mountain range up there somewhere. You might've spotted it." Petric pushed himself up with an effort and held out the knife handle-first. "Here."

"Keep it," Niall said. "I have a sword. One apiece; that's fair." Actually, it really _wasn't_ fair since one of them could throw fireballs from his hands, but it was better than Petric asking to borrow it every time he wanted to cut something.

"Sit down," Petric said. "Let me do yours, now."

"Do my ... what?"

"That." Petric nodded toward Niall's forehead.

He'd managed to come close, almost, to forgetting about his head wound -- or, at least, the stabbing headache had become part of his constant background noise of misery, along with aching muscles, sunburn, hunger, and thirst. "I don't think that's a good idea," he said, stepping back and raising a hand which stopped just shy of touching his scalp; the flinch reflex was deeply ingrained by now. "It's scabbed over. It'll be fine."

"Head wounds can get infected just the same as leg wounds, and that close to your eyes and ears isn't a place you want an infection," Petric insisted. "Sit, before we lose the light completely."

Niall wanted to refuse just on general principles, but now he was worried enough that he went ahead and sat down. He was now acutely aware of the great throbbing mass of pain over that side of his head, and he jerked when Petric leaned forward and touched his face. But the Wasp-kinden was only tilting his head to see better. His fingers were strong and gentle.

"What did that? Axe? Sword? It looks terrible."

"Axe, I think," Niall said. "Be careful."

He endured while Petric used a dampened rag to clean around the wound. "I think you're actually right," Petric finally admitted. "It's completely scabbed over, doesn't look like it's getting infected, and with nothing clean to bandage it, we probably ought to leave it alone." He half-smiled. "You must have a skull like a cast-iron pot."

"Right now it feels more like an iron pot with a hole in the bottom."

It was the closest he'd come to admitting how lousy he felt to the Wasp-kinden. At this point he no longer felt he had much to lose. However bad a shape he was in, Petric was demonstrably worse off. And they were, as Petric had taken pains to ensure, in this together, after all.

They packed up camp quickly, reshouldering their burdens. Petric made a short, clumsy flight to the top of the dune, but there he stopped, leaning heavily on his crutch. Niall started to flounder down the dune, then stopped when he realized the Wasp-kinden wasn't following him.

"Come back up here for a minute," Petric said.

Niall sighed in exasperation and clambered back up. "You could have said that _before,_ you know."

When he got there, Petric was looking up at the stars. The day's light was gone now, but for a dull red streak in the west, and the stars were bright and clear above them.

"See that one there?" Petric asked, pointing to a bright blue star hanging in the west, emerging slowly from the sunset's fading light.

"Yeah," Niall said. "At home, we call that one the Evening Beauty."

"Well, when the sun sets, you're going to want to put that one this much off to your left." Petric clamped his crutch under his arm to free up his good hand, and described a short arc of a circle in the air. "Turn. Like that. No, a little more to your right. Got it? Now ..." He pointed up. "That'll give you your bearing on the Fixed Star. Remember that angle, and stick to it, while the rest of the stars move. There's another constellation I'll show you later tonight that's good for checking your direction at this time of year."

Niall was silent for a moment. Then he said, "This is the direction for the oasis?"

"More accurately, that's the direction I assume it is _if_ I'm remembering the map correctly and _if_ we were where I think we were when the bandits hit us. Now ..." Petric tilted his head. "You lead for a while. I want to know for sure you've got it."

Niall continued to gaze at him for a moment, thinking a number of things, one of which was that he could take off, right now. He could leave. He could fly north, on the heading Petric had shown him, and then he'd be --

All alone, is what he'd be. All alone, in the great empty vastness of the wasteland. All alone, in the awareness that he'd taken a piece of trust that had been extended to him and used it to leave someone to die in the desert.

More to the point, he just didn't really want to.

"All right," he said. "You tell me if I'm going the right way. But ..." He braced himself for a wing-assisted hop to the next dune, then looked back. "You tell me when you need to stop, all right? Don't let me set a pace that's too fast."

Petric nodded, a slight incline of his head.

 

***

 

It was somewhere in that long dark time, when the fulcrum of the night balanced equally between sunset and dawn, that Petric began to stumble. Niall ignored it at first, or tried to, but after the third time he watched Petric struggle to pick himself up from the sand, climbing up the crutch, he drew on his inner resources for a quick burst of Art-assisted flight and landed beside his semi-unwanted traveling companion. "You said you'd stop for a rest when you needed it."

"I think ..." Petric began, then broke off. He'd been resting his forehead on his arm, draped over the crutch; now he looked up at Niall. His eyes had that glittering, feverish look again. "I think that's a good idea. You can fly on ahead, and scout it out, while I rest. Faster that way."

Something cold crawled around in Niall's belly. He felt as if he'd missed a piece of the conversation -- a very important piece. "We're close to the oasis, though, aren't we? You said we were two days out from the next town, and the oasis was closer. So we should be almost there."

"Two days by automotive," Petric corrected. "Longer on foot."

Niall started to make an angry retort, then bit it off. He'd been calibrating the duration of their journey to the oasis as "less than two days", assuming they were almost there. But he hadn't asked. And Petric, in fairness, hadn't been volunteering any more than he had to.

 _Learn to work together or die out here,_ he thought with bitter, self-directed humor. _So far we're doing a great job._

"I don't think we should split up yet," he said, and caught Petric as the Wasp-kinden started to slide down the crutch to the sand. With his hand on Petric's arm, he could feel the heat of the fever burning in the other man's body. "Do you have it in you to go a little further?"

"It makes more sense --" Petric began, rallying in argument.

"To stay together," Niall snapped, and without waiting for permission, he slid his arm around Petric's body and got a firm grip on his coat. "I'm not doing this by myself. I expect some help here."

Petric stared at him in disbelief, and Niall half expected to be stung. It was very strange to be so close to one of the enemy, their faces a mere handspan apart, the Wasp's trembling, feverish body pressed to his. But Petric did nothing; he only shook his head mutely, too worn down to argue. "On a three-count," he said.

Their first try spilled them both in the sand. It took them a couple of hops to get the hang of it. Niall could never have carried the weight of another person with his Art-made wings, but flying together, they could just do it -- one painful, exhausting leap at a time.

The terrain around them was slowly changing. Niall wasn't sure when the dunes had begun to give way to rocks, but they traveled now through a rough and broken waste, jutting outcrops of stone with soft waves of sand rolling about their feet. It would provide more shelter from the sun, Niall supposed, but there was still no sign of water or vegetation anywhere, inasmuch as he could tell in the dark. The moon had set, leaving them in almost unbroken darkness.

Petric's strength gave way suddenly, and he fell, pitching Niall down with him bruisingly onto the rocks that had, by now, largely replaced the dunes. His breathing was rough and labored. Niall pushed himself free of their entangling embrace and sat up. They'd made it through the night, he realized with dull exhaustion. The first streaks of dawn were showing in the eastern sky.

And he couldn't wake Petric up.

So he did the only thing he could do, and dragged the Wasp-kinden into the shelter of one of the twisted rock towers that had replaced the empty dunes. Mindful of Petric's advice the day before, he rigged their shelter on the eastern side, the spare coat stretched above their shallow cave and weighted with rocks. Even as he went through the motions, he wondered why he bothered. There was no oasis yet. Perhaps they'd passed it in the dark. And how much farther could either of them go?

They were almost out of water, too. Neither of them had been drinking nearly as much as they should have been, courting dehydration between the heat and their injuries, but when he tipped up his canteen, only a few drops came out. Some water still sloshed in the bottom of the one Petric carried -- a few swallows, at least. Niall sipped what he dared, fighting down his burning thirst, and tipped a little between Petric's lax, cracked lips.

He made himself eat the last of the bread, though it sat like a lump in his stomach; he knew he'd need the strength. He sipped a little more water, and shouldered the empty canteen. Leaving the rest of the water with Petric, he left the shelter. 

Carefully he noted the shape of the rock tower, and for added reassurance, when he landed on the next ridge, he built a little arrow-shaped cairn pointing back to it.

Drawning on his fading reserves of strength, he deployed his wings.

The sun had not quite risen yet -- on ground level, at least. But when he rose into the air, he flew high enough for the first rays to touch him, warming his face and glinting off his Art-conjured wings. Below him, the desert was emerging from shadow, shaking off the night and showing its face to the day.

There _were_ mountains up ahead. He could see them clearly now, though they were still at least a couple of days distant. The lower slopes were hazed with a dark shadow of vegetation. There would be water there, he thought, and his parched throat gave a pang at the thought. But he didn't think either of them -- certainly not Petric, and he suspected not himself either -- had the strength to get there.

But there was something closer. A shadow twisted through the rocks. River? he thought at first -- but no, they wouldn't be that lucky. It looked like an old, dry riverbed. And it wasn't the only one. The country between here and the mountains was increasingly rough and broken, seamed with the tantalizing erosion marks left by ancient water. Surely somewhere in one of those arroyos there _must_ be water still. He couldn't allow himself to believe otherwise.

His strength, and with it his wings, had begun to fail. Mustering what little energy he had left, Niall set himself in a long gliding descent, aiming for the nearest of the dry streambeds. He fell short of it, but it took him only a short walk, in the pleasant warmth of the morning sun, before he came to the edge of what turned out to be a narrow canyon some thirty or forty feet deep.

There was nothing below but rocks and long-dead, sun-bleached fingers of ancient brush. Still, the dead bushes indicated that water had flowed here once. Niall walked along the top of the canyon, seeking a way down. He no longer trusted his wings for even such a short distance. Eventually he found a place where a smaller side stream, also long vanished, had worn its way down to the larger watercourse below. Clumsy, his usual grace deserting him, he scrambled down and half-slid, half-fell to the sand-drowned pebbles of the ancient waterway. He was briefly grateful that no one, especially Petric, had been around to see him stumbling down the slope like the clumsiest of Beetle-kinden.

Now: upstream or down? Downstream would be lower, closer to the water table, and therefore more likely to find residual ponds or reservoirs, he reasoned. But upstream would be closer to the water's source, and hence there might still be springs that had dried up by the time they got this far down.

There was probably little enough to choose between them. He made the random decision to go downstream, and turned that way --

\-- and then, with the faintest of sounds behind him, something hard and long and sharp pressed into his neck.

Niall froze. He'd thought he was alone in the arroyo; he hadn't had the slightest sense of anyone else's presence until that subtle whisper of sound and the sudden pressure of the blade resting against his windpipe.

"Who are you?" a soft voice asked, inches from his ear.

Niall's throat had knotted and no sound would emerge. The blade pressed a tiny bit harder, which managed to unlock his vocal cords and send words tumbling out. "Cafere Niall, of the Dragonfly Commonweal. I'm not your enemy!" _Whoever you are._

"You are with the Wasps?" the voice asked in its sibilant whisper. "An Auxillian, a slave?"

Oh, right. He was wearing Wasp soldiers' clothes. "A slave," he said. "I escaped. I have no love for the Wasps, or they for me."

"How did you get here?"

"I -- I was in a slave caravan that was attacked by raiders. I survived, and came here trying to find water."

The blade eased off, and the unseen presence took a step backward. Niall staggered forward, gasping. "I am no friend of the Wasps, either," his assailant said. "But nor do I bear them any hate. I do not think about them much at all, if I can help it."

"I wish I had that luxury," Niall said, feeling his throat. The skin seemed to be unbroken.

He turned around cautiously, and didn't get run through. The swordsman -- or swordswoman, as it turned out -- was a Mantis-kinden, tall and haughty and austerely handsome. She was just tucking away her blade beneath her dusty cloak, the same color as the desert rocks.

Niall's eyes were drawn to the one item of adornment she wore, a sword-and-circle pin affixed to her cloak. A Weaponsmaster. He had heard of them, but never thought he'd see one, for there were not very many anymore. 

The fact that she was here at all, though, and on foot, seemed a hopeful sign to him. She couldn't have traveled much farther than he and Petric, because she would have needed to carry water with her just as they had. So they couldn't be too far away from a source of it. No more than a day or two, surely.

"I ... don't suppose you know if there's water around here?" Niall asked. He shook his empty canteen to demonstrate the lack. "Because if not, this is going to be a short trip for me. And my --" There was the briefest pause while he tried to figure out how to identify Petric. _Friend_ didn't seem to fit. Neither did _enemy_ , any more. "... traveling companion," he settled on, "is hurt and needs more water than we have left."

"One companion?" the Mantis said. "No more?"

"We were the only survivors. He was hurt in the fighting and his fever is bad."

She studied him with her head tipped slightly to the side, then jerked her head down the canyon. "Come."

She set out with a fast stride, her cloak swirling around her. Niall had to struggle to keep up, stumbling and nearly falling in his exhaustion. The sun was growing fiercer, beating down on him; the canyon walls wavered around him. He wondered how much good it would do to find water if he collapsed from heatstroke along the way.

Without warning, they left the main canyon and turned up a small side arroyo. It twisted and turned sharply, worn by the whims of past floods. Around one of the little turns, the Mantis-kinden stopped so abruptly that Niall barely managed to avoid running into her. "There," she said.

Here were the first plants Niall had seen anywhere, low dust-colored bushes and clumps of saw-edged grass, even a few scrubby trees. They were clustered around the edge of a pool, sheltered beneath overhanging rock. Niall fell to his knees beside it. He dipped up handfuls of water, drank what he dared, splashed it on his face, drank a little more. 

With water running down his face, he looked up at the Mantis, who had settled into a watchful stance and was observing him without expression. "Thank you," he said. "You saved my life. I would never have found this on my own."

A very slight smile tipped the edge of her mouth. "Be careful how you indebt yourself to a Mantis, little Dragonfly. That is the sort of debt that you cannot take back."

"I know," Niall said, but his mind was already flashing through its customary pathways, determining how best to subtly ingratiate himself with the people around him for his own advantage. It was the skill that had enabled him to survive captivity as long and as well as he had -- he was naturally talented at making friends with people and, perhaps more importantly, forging the kinds of bonds that made other people want to do things for him, or at least, in the case of slave-guards, not hit him so often and give him better food. And this seemed like a very good opportunity to make a friend in a place where he had none, gently putting a string on her to bind her to him. "I know, but I would like to repay you anyway. I have nothing at all now; what you see on me is all I possess. Someday, though -- someday, I will pay you back."

"And do you think your Wasp friend will appreciate you offering him up to debt as well, Dragonfly?" she asked, still smiling that faint, razor smile. "For by helping you, I am helping the both of you."

The water seemed to congeal in Niall's stomach. He hadn't mentioned that Petric was a Wasp, nor had he mentioned Petric's name, which would have given it away. He knew he hadn't. As a con artist by trade, he was too careful with his words for that. "You've been watching us."

"Of course I have," she said. "For a little while, anyway. I wondered who you were and what you were doing in such a remote place. Now, I suppose, I know -- or at least as much of it as you are willing to tell me. And yes, I agree that you and the Wasp owe me now, may you not regret _too_ much when he finds out."

Niall swallowed. Suddenly this was seeming like much less of a good idea. On the other hand, if he was going to owe her _anyway_ ... "I don't suppose you have any food, do you? And ... medicines, maybe?"

Her brows arched, and she gave a startled laugh -- a dry bark of a sound, but one with genuine humor in it. "You were a slave, you say? I find myself unsurprised that, of all the others, you were the one who somehow managed to survive an attack that killed all the others, not to mention a trek through one of the most inhospitable parts of the Dryclaw."

Niall decided not to mention that it had actually been pure chance. "I'm in your debt already," he pointed out. "A little more debt is not going to hurt me. Also, this has probably already occurred to you, but I feel it's only fair to point out that if I die, I can't ever pay back my debt to you."

"I don't think you realize exactly what a precipice you're flitting around, Dragonfly," she murmured. "I do not have medicine I am willing to share, but I can tell you about something that might help. Are you familiar with the plants of this land?"

Niall shook his head.

"There is one -- I do not know the local name for it. It looks like this." She crouched and, with one long finger, drew a three-lobed shape in the dust. "It is a grayish green, with soft hairs on the leaves. The Scorpions use it to treat fever and blood poisoning. It is fairly common in this country. If you look, you may well find some nearby. It tends to grow in high places, sides of cliffs and the like. As yours is a winged kinden, you should have no trouble achieving such heights."

Niall's pulse quickened. "How do you prepare it?"

"Crush it and apply it to the affected area. Make a tincture also, boiling some leaves in water. Boil it thoroughly. It is poisonous when raw, and only somewhat less so when cooked, so do not let him drink too much. Just a few swallows. But it will drive the other poisons from his body."

"Thank you," Niall said, unable to hide his heartfelt relief. At least there was _something_ he could do other than just watch Petric die.

The Mantis straightened and dusted her hand on her cloak. "And now you must wait here," she said. "I would not like to be followed and do not suggest you try."

With that, she whipped around and was gone with startling speed.

Naturally, this only made Niall want to follow her -- refreshed by the water, he thought he might be able to fly short distances now. Younger, having seen less of the world, he probably would have done so. But he wasn't that young Dragonfly-kinden anymore, thinking of the world as a place of infinite possibility, where if he was quick enough and skilled enough in his Art, he could not possibly come to harm.

Instead, he spent the time she was gone looking for the plant she'd described to him. Rather than using his renewed energy to fly after her, he spent it flying up to the tops of the arroyo's walls and looking in the crevices. To his surprise, he actually found a little clump of a gray-green plant that looked much like she'd described. He was pulling leaves when the Mantis-kinden reappeared below him.

Niall dropped to the ground, and couldn't help throwing in a quick little back-flutter, despite the strain and the extra upward spike in his headache, so he landed with most of the usual lightness and grace that his kinden enjoyed. The Mantis did not seem impressed. "Here," she said, holding out a small rough-woven sack. "This is what I can spare."

The bag contained a little bread, some strips of dried meat, and a couple of small, hard apples. "Thank you," Niall said. "It's a lot more than we had before."

"There is no need for thanks between two people of honor," she said, quite seriously. "I see you have had good luck in your search."

"These are the right plants, then?"

Her nod was slight, but perceptible. "I hope they are useful to your friend."

Niall let the "friend" thing pass, and offered her his most polite and courtly bow. "I hope to see you again."

"Oh, you will," she said. "You owe me, after all, Dragonfly."

He gave her a smile which she did not return. "It's Niall Cafiri, like I said before."

There was the briefest hesitation, and then she tilted her head in acknowledgment. "Diona," she said, and just like that, she was gone in a swirl of her cloak.

 

***

 

The heat of the day had come down like a hammerblow by the time Niall, with a full canteen, made his way back to where he'd left Petric. His headache had returned full force, and he felt wobbly and ill, despite the drinks of water he allowed himself and part of one of the strips of rock-hard dried meat he'd forced himself to chew.

The encounter with Diona gave him a lot to think about on the slog back. He'd met a Mantis Weaponsmaster! He'd _fought_ a Mantis Weaponsmaster! Well, kind of. If her holding her sword to his throat and then deciding not to kill him counted as a fight. Which it might be if he spun it correctly. This would make a wonderful story to tell to ...

... no one, he thought glumly. Oh, he'd need to share it with Petric, of course, for basic information-sharing purposes, but that wasn't the same as telling it to Mozzie over a bowl of wine, or watching Kayete's mobile expressions change as he got her to laugh and gasp in delight.

He was, suddenly, more crushingly homesick than he had been while he was still in chains. Then, at least, escaping and getting home had been a theoretical thing, something so intangible that it was barely worth contemplation. Now that going back to the Commonweal was a possibility, he was all too aware how impossible it might actually turn out to be. He didn't even know if any of his friends still lived. He was stranded, farther from home than he'd ever been, and desperately, unbearably alone.

He crawled into the stifling shelter, braced for the possibility that Petric had died in his absence. But the Wasp-kinden still lived, his chest rising and falling with shallow, raspy breaths. He didn't seem to have moved while Niall was gone, and the small amount of water remaining in the jury-rigged canteen was still there. When Niall touched his face lightly, he was burning up.

"Whether or not the plants work, you've got to drink," Niall muttered. He poured a little water into Petric's mouth. Most of it trickled out again.

At least now they had water to spare, even if it was limited by the time and effort involved in carrying it back from the pool. Niall cut strips off the ragged hem of his tunic, soaked them in water, and laid them on Petric's face and neck, and across his dry lips. Then he found a flattish rock, and another that fit in his hand, and began to smash the leaves he'd found. A sharp, pungent smell came up from them as he did so. When he picked up some of the mashed foliage, it stung his fingers slightly.

He really hoped this was a good idea.

But there was nothing else to try. As he unbound Petric's swollen, burned leg and spread the smashed leaves on the hot flesh, he informed the Wasp-kinden that dying and leaving him out here all alone would be a _gross_ dereliction of duty, and also extremely inconsiderate; that Petric was probably doing it out of sheer spite, because what else could you expect from a Wasp, and there was no way Niall was going to let him get away with _that_ , and so forth. He was mostly talking to himself in any case. He knew Petric couldn't hear him. The sound of his own voice helped block out the silence around their shelter, the utter silence of mile upon mile of country so empty it had no living thing except perhaps an occasional lizard or carrion beetle.

Diona had said to boil the leaves, and warned him against eating them raw, but he realized now that he had no fire, no way to make a fire, and nothing to boil them in even if he did. Perhaps that part could wait until later.

So he passed the heat of the day with his silent companion. Adequate water and a little more food was helping, finally, to abate his headache. He slept at last, head pillowed on his arm, and woke with a start to find evening's purple shadows covering the world outside their shelter. Petric was still unconscious, but he was sweating profusely -- had he been, before? In any case, that made water more important. Niall prodded him until he managed to rouse him enough to drink, then re-soaked the damp cloths which had dried in the afternoon's heat.

"Back soon," Niall told him. He picked up both canteens, and took to the air.

With some of his strength recovered, flying had become easier, and he was starting to rediscover some of his former pleasure in it. His people were strong fliers, and as he darted through the purpling sky, he thought, _I'm free._ This time, it felt less empty. He was a very long way from home, friendless in a hostile land, his only companion someone he knew he dared not trust. But he _was_ free, and the terrifying enormity of his suddenly-open future had contracted to the understanding that, just as when he was in captivity, he must take it one step at a time. The journey back to his homeland, and the infinitely terrible possibilities that he might find there, was too much to take in all at once. It was like planning a successful con. It was necessary to glance at the whole picture occasionally, but mostly it needed to be broken down into pieces and taken one piece at a time.

He could do this.

Dusk had fallen when he landed at the water hole, and it was almost dark at the bottom of the arroyo. Small scufflings rustled the grass around him, and the eyes of something low to the ground winked at him in the sky's reflected light. So there _were_ animals in this wasteland. He filled the canteens quickly and flew to the top of the arroyo's wall, just in case something larger and fiercer was planning to come along in the deepening twilight. Here, he spent a bit of time searching for more of the plants, and found another patch of them, tearing up handfuls.

Another thought occurred to him. He stopped along the way in the bigger canyon to gather an armload of dead, dry brush for firewood. He was, by now, thoroughly at his limit for carrying things while flying; he flew low, almost skimming the ground, and was drooping with weariness when he landed at the shelter. Still, a day ago he wouldn't have been able to do even that much.

When he ducked under the shelter's overhang, there was a sharp scuffling and a sudden flare of golden light.

"It's me!" Niall yelped. "Don't shoot!"

Petric made a disgruntled noise, and the spark of his sting expended itself on the sand near Niall's knee. "Say something next time," he rasped.

"If you can do that, do you think you can set some wood on fire?" Niall asked.

"What do you think I am, some sort of machine for making things burn?"

But he could, and he did, and soon a low fire was crackling at the mouth of the shelter, filling it with a soft yellow glow and the acrid smell of woodsmoke. Petric slumped back down, as if just that small exertion had wiped him out completely, and from his crumpled position with his head propped up on the rock wall of their shelter, he watched Niall crushing the leaves with the makeshift mortar and pestle. 

"What are you doing?"

"Making medicine, I guess." Niall wished he'd thought to bring one of the bowls from the automotive. In retrospect he was fairly sure neither of them had been thinking at all clearly at the time. The only thing they had that could even be remotely used to heat water was the second canteen, since it was made of metal, and given the choice between boiling leaves or boiling some of the dried meat to make broth, Niall opted for the latter.

Petric was watching him with a look that, while weary and still a little glazed with illness, had sharpened with interest. "Did you find someone to trade with?"

"Uh, sort of," Niall said, and told him about Diona while he reapplied the plaster to Petric's leg.

Petric reacted about as well as Niall had thought he would to being told that he now owed his life to a Mantis Weaponsmaster.

"She didn't even _do_ anything!"

"Petric, she showed me where water was, gave us food, and explained to me how to find and use these plants. You'd certainly be dead now if not for her, and I probably would be soon."

"Yes ... but ..." Petric seemed to have run out of logical objections, so he fell back on general complaints. "Do you know what Mantis-kinden are like? Do you have any _idea_ how seriously they take interpersonal obligations? She'd follow us all the way back to the heart of the Empire to claim what she thinks we owe her."

"We are definitely not going to the heart of the Empire," Niall retorted. "At least, _I'm_ not. You can if you want to."

Petric was silent. Niall didn't push him, having reminded himself that their truce was built on a foundation as uncertain as the shifting sands of the desert's dunes.

 

***

 

They moved their camp to the arroyo in the morning. Petric insisted that he was well enough to travel, and while Niall had his doubts, he didn't relish the idea of making trips for water and firewood two or three times a day. Their progress was slow, though, and it was the middle of the afternoon, the sun blazing down like a furnace, by the time they finally made it to the grotto with the pool. Petric was exhausted, and his fever seemed to be making a comeback, brought on by the exertion. He collapsed beside the pool. Niall nudged him until, looking irritated despite his drawn pallor, he moved out of the sunshine into the shade of the arroyo walls.

"I'll go find some more of those plants," Niall said. "Now that we have all the water we need, we can boil some of them and you can drink it. Diona said it's helpful that way for getting toxins out of your body, but you're not supposed to eat it raw because it's poisonous."

"Sounds wonderful," Petric groaned, and threw his good arm over his face.

Since he'd already searched the nearby cliffsides, Niall went back out to the main canyon and wandered in the uphill direction, trying to stay out of the blast-furnace sun as much as possible. As he checked likely-looking spots along the canyon walls, he asked himself what he was _doing._ In the midst of the crisis, fighting to save Petric's life, he'd had no doubts at all. Now that the immediate urgency had passed, he'd begun to wonder if the heat had gotten to his brain. Petric was a Wasp -- and, worse, he was an officer, and a smart and canny one. He had been responsible for the deaths of many people, almost certainly in the Commonweal as well as the Lowlands; Niall had never asked him where he'd been assigned before he came to the Dryclaw. And after they got out of this, if they got out of this, Petric would go right back to doing the things he used to do. He'd be the enemy again.

If Niall let him die here, there would be one less Wasp in the world. And that would be a good thing. Wouldn't it? For his people, certainly.

_If you'd met him in battle and had him in the sights of your bow, or at the point of a sword, you'd have killed him without thinking about it. Why is this different?_

But it _was_ different, and it frustrated him that he couldn't quite articulate why. He thought back to how desolate and alone he'd felt yesterday, and how much of that feeling, he now realized, had stemmed from his uncertainty about Petric's survival. He hadn't _wanted_ the Wasp-kinden to die.

_Because if he died, I'd be alone here. He's useful. I need him._

But he was still the enemy.

And now, though the desert lay quiet around him in the heat of afternoon, he unwillingly found himself back among the sights and sounds of battle. Remembered, with visceral intensity, the screams of the hurt and the dying; remembered how it felt to plunge his sword through the black-and-gold of a Wasp armored jacket, and feel it sink into the flesh beneath; remembered, all around him, men and women he'd shared laughter and drinks with the night before falling, dying, gasping out their last in the blood-soaked dust.

Fighting was one of the few things Niall had ever tried that he wasn't good at. He hadn't distinguished himself enough to be picked up for the Auxillians; he'd been thrown in with the menial slaves instead, which was probably for the best -- he doubted if he would have survived beyond his first battle if he'd had nothing to fight for. It was nothing like the elegant simplicity of a con. It was a frantic melee, a confusion of dust and pain and exhaustion and terror.

And the worst part was that now, as well as remembering how it had felt to watch everyone around him die, he couldn't help thinking of the Wasp army as men like Petric. Not evil men, not monsters. Men who had been drinking and laughing themselves the night before, and were now watching their friends cut down around them; men who would probably be decent company if you met them over a bowl of wine or a cup of tea instead of on the field of battle ...

Niall tried to shake off the shadows of the past. He flared his wings and soared up to the top of the canyon rim where he'd spotted a likely-looking crack in the rocks. A fool's mission, he thought. He should be resting through the heat of the day, not out hunting medicinal plants to get Petric well enough to go back out there and kill more of Niall's kinsmen. 

But he caught a glimpse of dusty green leaves in the back of the crevice, and with a sigh he reached in and plucked them, carefully, one by one.

He didn't see the scorpion in the crevice, as large as two spans of his hands, until it scuttled out and stabbed its tail into his forearm.

It felt like having a knife shoved into his arm. Niall yelled and fell backward. He tumbled down the cliffside, bouncing off rocks, making wild attempts to harness his Art and slow his fall. Instead he smacked into the ground hard enough to see stars.

Shaken, bruised, he lurched to his knees and frantically pushed up the torn sleeve of his Wasp coat. The scorpion's barb had buried itself deep in his arm and broken off. The black edge of it poked out of a ring of paler flesh surrounded by skin that was rapidly puffing up and darkening. His arm felt like it was on fire.

Gasping, terrified, Niall dug at the end of the barb with his fingernails. It hurt horribly, but all he managed to do was push it deeper in. He drew his sword and tried to press the tip of the blade into his skin and pry out the barb without slicing his arm open. He couldn't do it; his hand was shaking too much, and he couldn't move his other hand at all. It wasn't numb, not quite -- the fingers of his hand lay open and lax, unresponsive to his demands, but his flesh still burned with the scorpion's venom, all the way up to his shoulder.

His teeth were starting to chatter. He felt cold despite the heat of the day. When he tried to stand up, he fell back down.

 _I'm going to die,_ he thought, with shocking, painful clarity.

The leaves. He'd had a handful of them when he fell. On his knees, he scrabbled around in the dust until he found some of them where they'd scattered. If they were good for blood poisoning, maybe they could help with scorpion venom as well. He couldn't crush them properly with one hand, so he chewed them instead, pressing the chewed gum to the bleeding wound on his forearm. They tasted awful, so powerfully bitter the taste made him retch. Then his stomach spasmed again, and he thought weakly, _Oh, right. They're poison too._

He found himself lying on the ground, his cheek pressed to the sand, and wasn't sure how he'd gotten there. He was shivering all over, his heart racing, ears ringing.

 _Petric,_ was the only thought he had. Petric would be able to do something. Petric knew a lot of things. Petric might have seen something like this before. Petric would ... Petric would ...

He wasn't even sure why, but the conviction that he needed to _find Petric_ , that Petric could fix things, got him on his feet, clinging to the burning-hot rocks. He took a staggering step and fell again.

What followed was a dazed, feverish nightmare of struggling, painful movement. The rocks seemed to flow and crawl around him; sky and ground blurred together. He couldn't always tell if he was standing up or lying down, and sometimes he came back to himself to realize he was lying flat, and didn't know how long he'd been that way. _Petric_ was the one thought he had, the only goal he had. He wasn't thinking clearly enough to even know why he'd latched onto that, or why it had made sense to him once, but it was the only thing he had. Without that, he'd have had no goal at all. He'd just lie there in the sand until he died.

And then hands were on him. Petric's face swam into his blurred vision. He looked more worried than Niall had ever seen him, which didn't seem like a good sign. He said something, but it was lost in the humming in Niall's ears. Then he did something to Niall's arm, and it hurt a lot, and Niall went away for awhile.

There was some fading in and out, dazed memories, a vague awareness of someone making him drink something that tasted awful. He came back to himself, a little, in a cold awful darkness, and had a moment of horrible panic before he realized that it was night and he was lying on his back, looking up at the sky. He was very cold and his body felt heavy and dull, and everything hurt. Breathing was terribly difficult, like something heavy was pressing down on his chest. He started panicking as he struggled to breathe -- he couldn't get enough air, and he was dying, he was going to die --

"Niall." Petric's voice; Petric was crouching over him, firelight illuminating his face and glinting in his eyes. "Niall, look at me. Look at me."

Niall did, dully, because he didn't have a choice; he couldn't move anyway. "I'm dying," he whispered.

"No, you aren't," Petric told him flatly. "You're going to be fine. Do you hear me? Look at me, Niall. Listen to me. You're going to be fine."

The strange thing was how hard it was not to believe him. There was a ring of command in his voice, and Niall realized dazedly that he'd never seen this side of Petric before, had never seen _this_ Petric -- the one who commanded men and inspired them to follow him.

"Look at me," Petric said again, more gently. "You're going to be fine. Say it."

"I'm going to be fine," Niall whispered, and then the world slid away again.

 

***

 

There was another long confused time, when all he knew was pain and fear and dizziness. And Petric ... Petric was always there. Dimly he was aware of Petric making him drink things, and then sometimes holding him, supporting him, when whatever Petric had given him refused to stay down. He was no longer sure where he was; all he knew was that he was far from home, and very scared. He became aware, once, that he was crying, though he wasn't sure why, and Petric sat next to him with a hand on his arm, talking to him. He couldn't understand the words, but the voice was a tether, something to keep him from falling away into the night.

And then, finally, he woke up aching and ill, but clearheaded. He felt as if he had a terrible hangover, or was getting over some kind of long illness. It was daytime, the sky a clear blue bowl overhead, and he was lying on his back with his head propped on something. Stirring a little, he found that there was a coat under him and another over the top of him, and the thing his head was resting on was the thigh of Petric's good leg.

"How long?" he asked, his voice cracking.

Petric glanced down at him. He'd been working, cutting strips of something withered and brown on a rock next to his hip. It was slow going, since he had to work one-handed. "Three days," he said.

"Oh." Niall's eyes tried to drift shut, but he opened them again. He didn't really want to sleep, and had a feeling that he'd feel a little better if he could manage to sit up and maybe eat something. Hunger, which had deserted him for days, was now starting to show itself again on the distant horizons of his world, and he could smell something cooking.

"Water?" Petric asked.

Niall nodded, and Petric helped him sit up, folding the coat that had been over the top of him into a pad and then propping against the rocks with the coat tucked behind his back. He helped Niall hold the canteen to drink.

Although still weak, he felt a little better afterwards, and leaned against the folded coat while watching Petric putter around the fire. Petric looked a lot better now, and was no longer using the crutch to get about, though he limped heavily. 

Petric looked up and saw Niall watching him. He smiled, his eyes warm. "Think you could eat?"

"I guess so." His stomach was still a little uncertain about it, but he was definitely hungry, and whatever was cooking smelled ... well, maybe not _good_ , but at least edible.

Petric took a large, shallow bowl off the fire, using folds of his tunic to protect his hands, and brought it over. It took Niall a moment to realize that it was the second canteen, the metal one. It had been split open and hammered out, probably with a rock, to make a container for cooking in. There was some kind of thin broth in it, with chunks of unidentifiable meat. Niall sipped at it, and chewed one of the chunks. It was rubbery and a little scorched-tasting. It was definitely not the dried meat Diona had given them.

"What am I eating, exactly?"

"Lizard," Petric said. He grimaced. "Burnt lizard. Turns out a lot of animals come to this spring to drink at night, and most of them are not very wary about my sting. Or, at least, didn't used to be -- they're getting wise to it now."

That was what he'd been cutting up, Niall realized now. Dried lizards. "And they come pre-cooked." 

"If you like your food well done." Petric laughed suddenly, a warm, delighted sound that startled Niall. It was the first time since they'd been traveling together that he'd seen Petric look happy. "Welcome back, by the way."

Niall turned over his bitten arm. It was unbandaged, and he gazed at the raw, ugly scabs where the scorpion's barb had been dug out. His fingers still felt a bit numb, but he flexed each in turn and found them responsive.

"Thank you," he said.

"I guess you could call it returning the favor." Petric had been cleaning his knife on a clump of grass; now he looked up, his face serious. "You didn't leave me."

"You were the one who knew where the oasis was."

Petric winced. "Apparently I didn't. This is definitely not what I was aiming for. I think we're actually somewhat east of it."

"Close to the mountains, though," Niall said, remembering. He hadn't had a chance to talk to Petric, yet, about his scouting efforts. "I flew up and took a look around, before, uh. You know, when I could still fly."

"I know," Petric said. "I flew up and took a look around, too. We're actually very close to the edge of the Dryclaw now. If we keep going, we should start coming into settled lands soon. Another couple of days, at most." He nodded to the strips of lizard jerky drying on the rocks, looking like small, unappetizing pieces of leather. "Provisions."

 _And what after that?_ But Niall didn't want to ask -- didn't want to break the fragile sense of companionship that seemed to have settled over them for the moment. Instead he only nodded, and settled back down to sip more of his lukewarm lizard soup.

 

***

 

It was two more days before Niall felt well enough to travel. He was still weak, but there were a number of reasons why they needed to move on as quickly as possible, not the least being that they hadn't had proper food, let alone enough of it, in much too long. They'd both lost weight, and Niall, after months as a slave, didn't have a lot of it to lose.

But, also, it had not escaped Niall's notice that Petric, as he recovered from his injuries, became increasingly nervous and alert. He built small fires from wood so dry it gave off little smoke, and used his limited flying abilities -- Wasps were not strong flyers, and Petric seemed to be less so than most -- to fly up to the top of the arroyo and look around. Instead of resting and recovering his strength, he spent a lot of time in restless movement, collecting food and sharpening his knife.

"What are you looking for?" Niall asked, when Petric came down from one of his scouting excursions.

"Scorpion-kinden," Petric said tersely. "And, this close to the mountains, possibly bandits of other kinden as well. There aren't many people in the Dryclaw that you'd want to meet, and the longer we stay at a water hole, the more likely we are to meet them." 

"Diona seemed nice enough," Niall couldn't help pointing out.

Petric gave him a long, scathing look. "Yes, and we now owe her a debt of unspecified magnitude. If we run into anyone else, I'll do the negotiating."

" _You_ were unconscious at the time."

Petric looked exasperated, but didn't seem to have a comeback for that one. "Anyway," he said, falling back on his "troop commander" mode, "we should move out as soon as we can."

"Going where?" Niall asked. They hadn't really talked about it yet.

"Mountains," Petric said after a brief pause. "We'll head into the mountains. We should begin to encounter farmsteads and hunters' cabins -- places where we can barter for food and somewhere to sleep."

"We don't have to stay together," Niall pointed out. "You don't want to head for that garrison town you were talking about?"

Petric shook his head. "I don't have the water or supplies to cross that much of the desert. Not right now. No, we should go to the mountains -- and at least for now, it seems to make more sense to stick together. You can scout ahead with your wings, and I ..." He flexed his hand. "... can hunt for both of us. If you're all right with that," he added, seeming finally to realize he didn't have authority to make decisions for both of them.

"Sure," Niall said. "May as well."

And so here they were, dousing their campfire with handfuls of water from the pool, and preparing to set out in the cool of the evening. There was little to pack; they had almost nothing. Petric had a small amount of lizard jerky in the bottom of the sack Diona had given them, and a laden canteen. Niall, as the Dragonfly-winged scout, carried nothing. They both agreed it made more sense for him to go ahead and check out their path while Petric followed more slowly.

Petric had discarded the heavy, hard-to-carry metal crutch for a walking stick he'd fashioned out of wood from the gnarled trees that grew around the water hole. There was little left, now, of the tidily dressed, well-groomed Wasp officer that Niall vaguely remembered from his days in the slave caravan. Petric looked like any desert nomad or refugee, so covered with dust that one had to look very closely to make out the black and gold in the ragged remains of his uniform. He'd bound his broken arm to his chest with shredded pieces of the coat they had lately used for a sun shelter. A light sandy-brown beard was growing in, further obfuscating his Wasp features. Niall had a feeling that he was much more recognizable as a Dragonfly, at the moment, than Petric was as a Wasp.

"I hope we reach the mountains fast," Niall said. With the second canteen ruined, they had only one between them. Even with severe rationing, they barely had enough water to last them a day.

"We'll be all right. As we head out of the Dryclaw, we'll begin to hit more lakes and streams. And if worst comes to worst and we don't find water before we run out, we can always come back here."

"So tell me," Niall said. The evening was deepening, and with his wings on the edge of deployment, he could be up to the canyon rim in an instant, long before Petric could wield his sting. "What are the odds of us running into a Wasp patrol? Any of your people wandering around out here?"

"Maybe," Petric allowed. If he thought it was a loaded question, he gave no sign. "I don't think it's likely. The Empire isn't especially concerned with this kind of lonely, backwater country. It doesn't pay much in taxes or field very many Auxillians or slaves. Most likely, all we'll run into are farmers and the occasional hunter or trader."

"But if we _do_ meet up with more of your kinden," Niall said, his wings a faint glow limning the edge of his coat. "What would you do then?"

"What do you _think_ I'm going to do?" Petric shot back. "Point you out as a convenient escaped slave they may wish to consider recapturing?"

"Can you honestly say you weren't planning to do that from the start?"

"Niall, I --" Petric stopped, apparently realizing that his hand had come up halfway; it wasn't a deliberate threat, Niall didn't think, so much as a response to his emotional agitation. Still, he folded his hand into a fist, and shoved it in his pocket. 

"Things have changed," he said after a moment. "A lot. I don't know what we'll find up ahead. You're more right than you know not to trust me, and I guess we both know I'm going to try to make contact with my people once we're out of this place. Of course I will, as I imagine you will too. But ..." He looked up, and smiled, lopsided and tense. "I can promise I won't hand you over to them, or to passing slavers, or to anyone. I won't turn you in."

"All I have is your word on that."

"I know," Petric said. "So. Your choice. We can split up now, if you want to." He took a deep breath, unslung the canteen from his shoulder, and held it out. "If you go, take this."

"Oh, right," Niall said, making no move to take it, "so _you_ can die of thirst in the wasteland between here and the mountains."

The lopsided smile flashed again. "I suppose the fact that we have only one canteen _is_ a problem with the splitting-up idea."

"Have to stay together," Niall said, a bit heavily. "For now."

"Truce," Petric said gently.

"I know."

With that, Niall let his Art surge in him, and leaped toward the star-spattered sky in a blur of glittering wings. Leveling off, he looked down, and watched Petric fly to the top of the canyon wall, and drop to the ground, still looking up.

Niall waved to get his attention, and pointed toward the mountains, their high jagged peaks gleaming in the moonlight. Petric nodded, and Niall dived forward and streaked off, wings blurring, wind streaming past him.

He didn't know who or what he trusted in now. He was a con artist; he spent most of his life in that shadow ground between truth and lies. Being a slave had only made him less inclined to believe promises and reassurances. Trust was a commodity rarely given for his kind -- con artist or slave; the same applied to both -- and seldom repaid in kind when it was. And Petric had flat-out _told_ Niall that he couldn't be trusted, anyway.

So, no, he didn't. But he'd spent years back in the Commonweal working with partners he trusted no more, and probably a lot less. And, though he might not trust Petric, it was hard to deny -- to himself, at least -- that he liked the guy, Wasp or no.

If he _had_ to be stranded in the desert with a Wasp, there were a whole lot of worse options.

Niall spread his Art-born wings wide, and flew toward the mountains.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure if there is going to be more of this. I figured I'd create a series for it, though, just in case I come up with new installments! (I'm still reading the Shadows of the Apt series right now, so there may be more inspiration ahead.)
> 
> Meanwhile you can follow along with my fic at [sholiofic](http://sholiofic.tumblr.com) on Tumblr, or my blog on [DW](http://sholio.dreamwidth.org).


End file.
